After my unpleasant experience with Philip Kerr’s Field Gray, I was in the mood for something less ambitious and more fun. I found it in Lee Child’s first Jack Reacher thriller, Killing Floor
Child, an English television writer who does a very creditable job portraying American characters and settings, knows a few important truths about thriller writing. He knows that “movie logic,” the phenomenon that allows movies to get away with a lot of unlikely or impossible story elements because “I just saw it right there,” also works—to a certain extent—in action novels. The very unlikely coincidence on which this book’s plot pivots doesn’t bear close examination, but Child treats it matter of factly and keeps the interest up, and most readers come along for the ride. I know I did. Enjoyed it too.
His hero is Jack Reacher, a former military policeman who was raised a Marine brat. Having left the Marines, he is now traveling the United States, getting to know the country of which he is a citizen, in which he has never actually spent much time. And so, purely on a whim, he gets off a bus and walks to a tiny town called Margrave, Georgia, where he is immediately arrested by the police. A man has been murdered, and the stranger is a natural suspect. By the time Jack’s alibi has checked out, he’s met a very attractive lady cop he wants to know better, and come to feel a certain responsibility for a fellow prisoner, a rich man who doesn’t know how to handle himself in lock-up. But when he learns the identity of the murdered man, Jack’s course of action is decided. He has an obligation.
Fortunately for the good guys, Jack’s a very dangerous man—the very kind of man you want around when you’re up against a murderous, amoral conspiracy.
Killing Floor has all the virtues—and some of the faults—of an inspired first novel. Some of the detective work seemed a little too neat to me, and one of the big mysteries probably won’t be as much a mystery to readers today as it was when the book was published, more than a decade ago. But I took it on its own terms and had a great time. I’m already reading the second Jack Reacher novel, Die Trying, which starts with another coincidence almost as dubious as the one that kicks off this book.
Jack Reacher has some similarities to Stephen Hunter’s Bob Lee Swagger, but the classic character he reminded me most of was John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee. Travis McGee, although he had a permanent address, lived on a house boat, and so was metaphorically adrift in the world. Jack Reacher is literally rootless, describing himself at one point as a hobo. The two have similar attitudes, and even resemble each other.
Killing Floor is recommended for grown-ups.
Update: Endorsement retracted. The reasons may be found here.
Speaking the Simple Truth
The next U.S. Poet Laureate has been announced. It’s Detroit-native Philip Levine.
John Thomas reports: “On the announcement of his being named U.S. Poet Laureate, Librarian of Congress James Billington said, ‘Philip Levine is one of America’s great narrative poets. His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling The Simple Truth — about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.'”
Here’s a bit of Levine’s work:
The new grass rising in the hills,
the cows loitering in the morning chill,
a dozen or more old browns hidden
in the shadows of the cottonwoods
beside the streambed. I go higher
to where the road gives up and there’s
only a faint path strewn with lupine
between the mountain oaks. (Read on …)
Fighting Back Hard
Speaking of bullies and rioting in the streets, there’s a movie in production about a black power group targeting and killing abortionists for the industry’s focus on the African-American community. Alfonzo Rachel praises it here, saying pro-lifers who decry any story depicting violence against abortionists are missing the larger point.
Gates of Hell by Molotov Mitchell is riddled with true statistics about the practical genocide against black families through abortion. That’s the ugly part of this story, less than the fictional violence.
One pro-life advocate argues Gates of Hell “is a vigilante apologia, and I genuinely fear that it will whip up young black men and lead some to violence.” I doubt it, in part because it doesn’t appear this movie will be widely released, and of all the movies with black men shooting each other, I wouldn’t bet this one would inspire violence more than any of them.
Now that I’m thinking about it, what movies have been made about terrorism or murder for a good cause. Is Death Wish the only type of this, a personal revenge storyline? Maybe the others are all war movies.
A moral problem
I remember it like it was yesterday, and I’m still not sure how to think about it.
I believe I was in sixth grade, so I must have been eleven years old. It was a tough year. The usual troubles at home, and my teacher, a forceful lady whose family had had some historical differences with mine (I have no evidence that that fact influenced her), had decided that the only explanation for the trouble I was having in arithmetic class must be laziness. She had made it her business to shape me up. She lectured me often in front of the class. She gave me special punishments. She’d made me one of her personal projects.
One afternoon when school was over, I was coming out into the entryway to the building. There were inner doors at the top of the wide steps, and outer doors at the bottom. Three guys were waiting for me outside the inner doors. They ringed me, blocking my way. “Why don’t you try harder at math?” they asked. Continue reading A moral problem
"Jean-Jacques Rousseau has triumphed"
On July 30, The Wall Street Journal published an excellent interview with English psychiatrist Anthony Daniels, who writes splendid stuff under the pen name “Theodore Dalrymple,” about Anders Behring Breivik and the Norwegian murders. Dalrymple worked for many years with criminals in English prisons, and so is well qualified to discuss murder in the context of European society.
The human impulse to explain the inexplicably horrific is revealing, according to Dr. Dalrymple, in two respects—one personal, one political. First, it says something about us that we feel compelled to explain evil in a way that we don’t feel about people’s good actions. The discrepancy arises, he says, “because [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau has triumphed,” by which he means that “we believe ourselves to be good, and that evil, or bad, is the deviation from what is natural.”
For most of human history, the prevailing view was different. Our intrinsic nature was something to be overcome, restrained and civilized. But Rousseau’s view, famously, was that society corrupted man’s pristine nature. This is not only wrong, Dr. Dalrymple argues, but it has had profound and baleful effects on society and our attitude toward crime and punishment. For one thing, it has alienated us from responsibility for our own actions. For another, it has reduced our willingness to hold others responsible for theirs.
Thumbs down: Field Gray, by Philip Kerr
I have to tell you, this one hurts. Being sucker-punched by someone you trusted always smarts, and my great admiration for Philip Kerr’s writing makes my disappointment—I could have said feeling of betrayal—on reading Field Gray all the more painful.
Kerr’s continuing character, World War II era Berlin-based detective/cop/soldier Bernie Gunther, is a splendid literary achievement. He’s a relatively decent man in an insanely indecent situation. He tries to do what he sees as right, but is constantly undercut by history. He’s Philip Marlowe on a meaner street, facing challenges Raymond Chandler knew nothing of.
He hates the Nazis and the Communists equally, he informs us. That suited me just fine. But what I didn’t realize (though I should have guessed from heavy hints in the last novel, The One From the Other) is that there’s one group he hates even more.
The Americans.
You see, the Americans have committed unforgivable crimes. They eat too much. They think they won the war. They see the world in black and white. They don’t always live up to their principles, which makes them hypocrites, and thus far worse than mere mass murderers. They treated Bernie real mean, arresting him in Cuba at the beginning of this book, beating him up (under the impression he was a fugitive war criminal), and imprisoning him for a while at Guantanamo (GUANTANAMO!!!!!), where it was hot and there were mosquitoes. Compared to that his treatment by the Communists, who merely put him in a death camp, mining radioactive pitchblende, obviously pales.
There is one passing reference to the Berlin Airlift in this novel. Bernie brushes it aside. Obviously the Americans did it “for themselves.”
And so he chooses a Communist agent, a murderer who has tried to murder Bernie himself in the past, over a group of American agents who have done him no harm at all. Because they’re just “Amis,” while a German, you know, is a German. Apparently it comes down to “Deutschland über alles” after all.
I’m sure Philip Kerr doesn’t want any of my filthy American money, and he may rest assured I won’t spend any more on his books.
Field Gray is a superbly written novel that I do not recommend at all.
On the sanctity of futile gestures
As you may possibly have noticed, I am not known for my cheery, optimistic demeanor. Whenever I get together with Mark Steyn for brandy and cigars, he says to me, “Chill, dude. Things aren’t that bad.”
So if I counsel you not to despair, and to act on hope even when you feel none, you’ll know I’m speaking from conviction, if not from enthusiasm.
Today I was reading from the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 15, verses 42-43.
It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body.
What struck me about this passage was the apparent futility of Joseph’s action. As a member of the Sanhedrin with suspicious connections to the Nazarene sect, in a city occupied by Romans, he had absolutely nothing to gain by bringing himself to the attention of the authorities on either side. The Rabbi was dead. Nothing could be done about that. Wouldn’t the prudent thing be to keep a low profile until feelings subsided?
But for some reason we can only guess at, Joseph went to the hated Roman procurator and ask for the body. Perhaps he went right into Pilate’s house, though that would pollute him ceremonially, since he was planning to handle a corpse anyway. It was a quixotic gesture, like a Confederate soldier flying the Stars and Bars in a city occupied by Federal troops. There wasn’t a thing to be gained by it, and much to lose.
But unbeknown to himself, he was participating in a victory he couldn’t conceive of.
When I read Two Years Before the Mast, I came across a sailor’s proverb, quoted by Richard Henry Dana. It’s passed into our language in abbreviated form since then– “Never say die, while there’s a shot in the locker.”
The moral of this story seems to be that we should never say die even when the locker’s empty.
"How Painting is Like Writing"
Gabriel Boray writes, “All art is about tension, conflict and resolution.”
Starbucks: Thanks For Coming, But Please Leave
High volume Starbucks stores are blocking select electric outlets in order to move sedentary laptop users out of the store. You know the type. Perhaps, you are the type. You take your laptop to the coffee shop, pay too much for something that tastes so good, and take up a chair for the rest of the morning. In some New York Starbucks, they would love for you to move on down the road.
Back On Murder, by J. Mark Bertrand
Those of us who read both secular and Christian fiction tend to employ a double standard. There’s a full-out “excellent” category in the secular field, and then there’s “excellent for Christian fiction,” which is understood to be not quite as good as the secular stuff, but better than the average CBA fare.
(As a corollary, I find that I also have a counterbalancing prejudice. When I encounter really good Christian fiction, I think I sometimes depreciate it a little, just out of defensive critical snobbery. Something I need to watch out for. I may have done it with this book.)
J. Mark Bertrand, in his first police procedural novel, Back on Murder
The hero of Back On Murder is Roland March, a Houston police detective near the bottom of his profession. Once he was a star, the cop who solved a dramatic case that got turned into a best-selling book. But a personal tragedy took the heart out of him. Now he’s a time-server, the “suicide cop”–the cop who gets stuck with the unenviable job of investigating when other officers kill themselves. He’s the subject of pity and derision at headquarters. His marriage is strained.
But at the beginning of this story he finds himself, uncharacteristically, at a crime scene, a house where several gang members have been shot to death. By accident, he notices a detail that changes the whole investigation—someone has been tied to the bed in the house, and that someone is not there anymore. Suddenly March is “back on homicide,” and energized by an investigation for the first time in years. Then he’s transferred to a task force investigating the high-profile disappearance of a teenage girl. He’s disappointed until he grows convinced that the two cases are linked—the missing person on the bed, he believes, was that girl. Working with an attractive female missing persons cop, he enters the unfamiliar world of the girl’s church and faith life, puzzling like an anthropologist over the odd customs and mores of these bizarre evangelicals. Continue reading Back On Murder, by J. Mark Bertrand